Eight-year-old Bruno and his twelve-year-old sister Gretel find themselves alone with their mother in a cold, modernist estate-kept company only by soldiers, a stray inmate servant or two, far-off glimpses of "pajama" - clad "farmers," and a frequent plume of acrid, pungent black smoke.

_robe de chambre_, which the girls best liked to call a pajama, and now slipped her feet into a pair of little Turkish slippers, all toe and sole, and opening the communicating door, peered into the library.

Now I opine (I have stolen that word from Irvin) that under those circumstances, or something approximating them, such as pajama trousers, or the neglect to conceal that portion of a shirt not intended for the public eye, almost any man of my acquaintance would have made a wild bolt for the nearest bar, hissing like a teakettle.

The endearing notion of interactive ­cultural democracy has always been a major selling-point of the internet: what I say is as valid as what you say, even if you can spell the word "pajama" better than me.